Thoughts on GameCity

Last week I attended the GameCity festival in Nottingham, and it was a blast! I met a lot of really nice people there; people who make, play and write about games. It was the first outing I’d had showing a game in public, and the first actual public test of Laser Bash, so suffice to say I was both excited and terrified in nearly equal measure.

I got a lot of great feedback on the game, and as of writing this, I have a huge laundry list of changes and tweaks I plan to make going forward. Having the opportunity to see the reactions of dozens of fresh faces was invaluable. I was pleased (and also shocked) that the reception was so overwhelmingly positive; but I was also surprised at how people responded to certain things in the game. I got the chance to see what parts of the game were immediately understandable, or confusing, or satisfying or frustrating to the player. I also got a lot of suggestions. All of this feedback will hopefully be reflected in the game the next time I demo it.

One of the cool folks I met was Lorenzo Pilia of Localmultiplayer.com. I was vaguely aware of the site and events that it organised, but I hadn’t heard of the man behind it. Turns out he’s a really nice guy; and he had lots of encouraging things to say about my game, despite it being a really buggy early build. He took a photo of me and put it on Twitter, which gave me an opportunity to display my complete inability to pose sensibly in front of a camera.